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UK: Legalising cannabis worth millions - government study
NYSE Post
Wednesday 14 Oct 2015
As much as 216 tonnes of cannabis are consumed by the British public a year, while 2.2 million people aged 16 to 59 have used the drug in the last year. "I see nothing in these findings to frighten any government - there is no killer fact that makes legalisation unthinkable", Pudney said. The Treasury report argues that sum is probably an over-estimate. The study was commissioned by the Liberal Democrat party, the then-partner of the Conservatives in a coalition government. Included in the panel is professor David Nutt, the former government chief drugs adviser, who was sacked in 2009. The Lib Dems are setting up an expert panel to investigate the feasibility of legalising cannabis, which will examine evidence from Colorado and Washington state in the USA, where cannabis has been legalised since 2012, as well as from Uruguay. Norman Lamb, the Lib Dem health spokesman, said the study - believed to the first carried out by the government - added to growing evidence pointing to the need for a new approach to cannabis. "I share people's concerns about the health impacts of any drug - legal or illegal", Lamb said. High debate: MPs to weed out pros and cons of legalising cannabis "That's the approach we've taken with cigarettes and it's led to dramatic reductions in smoking in recent years". Legalizing cannabis could create hundreds of millions of pounds in tax revenue and allow the justice system to make huge savings on the prosecution of offenders, a leaked Treasury report reveals. "We must end the hypocrisy of senior politicians admitting to using cannabis in younger years - and describing it as "youthful indiscretions" - whilst condemning tens of thousands of their less fortunate fellow countrymen and women to criminal records for precisely the same thing, blighting their careers". "There are successful cannabis markets emerging in different parts of the world and we should look to learn from these experiences". If people were no longer charge for possession of cannabis, there would savings of £18m to the police, £24m to the courts, £9m in community sentences, £3m to the probation service and £2m to prisons. However, the government does not look like it is going to make any significant changes just yet. The debate was called after a petition to legalise the production, sale and use of cannabis attracted more than 221,000 signatures. The Home Office has previously refused to consider relaxing the UK's laws around cannabis, with Theresa May, the Home Secretary, insisted that a downward trend in drug misuse is because the current strategy is effective. The Treasury cited research concluding that cannabis use is not closely linked to adult productivity, although it pointed to academic studies pointing to long-term adverse effects for consumption of the drug among under-16s.
http://nysepost.com/legalising-cannabis-worth-millions-government-study-17738
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